1. Field of the Invention
The present application generally relates to data processing in financial, business practice, management, or cost/price determination in reservation, check-in, and booking display for reserved space. Systems and methods for sales, pricing, and distribution of tickets for concert, sports, and other events are presented. More specifically, the present invention relates to a system and method for facilitating the pricing of tickets at a venue prior to the event, displaying seat inventory at the venue, determining demand for tickets before, during, and after an initial on-sale, and automatically determining if prices should be changed or inventory should be redirected to a different distribution channel based on the demand for the tickets. The present application also relates to determining optimally valued tickets for purchase by a consumer and determining the appropriate customer for that ticket.
2. Description of the Related Art
Computer systems and networks have facilitated the task of buying, selling, and transferring goods. For example, global computer networks, such as the Internet, have allowed purchasers to quickly and efficiently seek and purchase goods on-line. Buying and selling tickets online to events at sports stadiums, arenas, theaters, entertainment clubs, and other venues has become a multi-billion dollar industry.
The accurate pricing of tickets is sometimes critical to achieve maximum revenues for an event. Prices that are too high will curb demand, while prices that are too low will create ample demand but at a non-optimal price. For sports teams, prices are typically determined at the beginning of a season, and pricing adjustments are made through promotions, give-aways, or other mechanisms. However, the face value of the tickets often remains unchanged. For concerts and other “one-off” events, pricing can be independent of other events.
The relative pricing of tickets within a venue is also a challenge. Currently, prices are typically determined by their ‘section’ in a venue. The closer, more centered, and less obstructed the view of the event from the section, the better the seat and the higher the ticket price. Seats with comparable views can be considered seats of comparable seat quality. In some venues, floor tickets in a given section will be priced higher than the rest of the seats in that section. Today, these pricing decisions are typically made based on personal experience of promoters, venue representatives, and other industry professionals.
In a venue, a ‘seat’ is not necessarily a chair, bench, or other apparatus upon which one sits down. Instead, a seat can include an open space for a wheelchair, stroller, or similar conveyance, a position in a general standing area, a place to bring one's own chair and picnic basket, or other definitions as known in the art. A seat can also include a parking place for drive-in theater, a dock along a log-boom for watching a hydroplane race, a rail upon which to tie up a horse, or other positions upon which a vehicle or conveyance can be parked, anchored, or moored. For clarity and simplicity in explanation, individual seats will be referred to in the examples of this specification, although the broader term is certainly envisioned.
There are many types of revenue management challenges in sports and entertainment planning, including how to price events. Pricing an event commonly occurs in advance of the beginning of ticket sales, but can also occur over time during the sale period of tickets and even during the beginning of the event. Other challenges related to pricing include deciding what discounts should be offered or what premiums should be charged, to whom and when to offer or charge the discounts or premiums, and issues around grouping events into packages. Ticket packages can include multiple tickets for different events at the same venue and different events at different venues. Packages can also include tickets sold for the same event at the same venue for large parties, for example group discounts.
Selling events in bundles as season or partial-season tickets is an important revenue management area, especially for sporting events. Customers who purchase bundles are committing to multiple events, but at reduced per-event ticket prices. The customers are assured that they will be able to attend events throughout the season. Season tickets may yield revenue benefits for the selling organization, such as early cash flow and reduced risk. Thus, bundled ticket products are prioritized and are generally sold first in the selling season, while individual tickets for those events are made available at a later date. Determining the proper mix of bundled sales and single seat sales can be an important decision.
Often, pricing is determined based on a total or net revenue target associated with the event rather than on demand for that particular event. The pricing of events often involves the use of a spreadsheet which contains the number of seats in each section. Prices for each section are estimated and added to the spreadsheet, and the total revenue is calculated by multiplying the section price by the total seating capacity for that section. Pricing is altered until a certain targeted total revenue is met. From the spreadsheet, a venue map is then colored by hand to give a visual representation of the seating arrangement and corresponding price levels. The tradeoff between sections, pricing levels, and other factors is tracked in the minds of the venue representatives and promoters. The ability to visualize the seating arrangements in a venue map is not directly linked to the ability to calculate financial information.
Ideally, prices would be established before an event takes place and these prices would never need to be altered. However, it may also be desirable to change prices once an event has gone on sale. If the initial indication is that demand is greater than expected, it would be desirable to raise prices. If demand is lower than expected, it may be desirable to lower prices.
Recently there has been a growing interest in revenue management systems. This is particularly true for perishable products. A perishable product is one where the item has no value beyond a certain date. One obvious example is a food product susceptible to spoilage, but hotel rooms, airline seats, and event tickets are also examples of perishable products. See U.S. Pat. No. 7,020,617 issued Mar. 28, 2006 to Ouimert and U.S. Pat. No. 6,078,893 issued Jun. 20, 2000 to Ouimert et al., both hereby incorporated by reference for all purposes. Airline seats and hotel rooms are particularly of interest in some recent studies. See U.S. Pat. No. 6,993,494 issued Jan. 31, 2006 to Boushy et al. and R. Preston McAfee and Vera te Velde, “Dynamic Pricing in the Airline Industry,” (Pasadena, Calif.: California Institute of Technology, undated), 44 pages. These systems use past history and current inventory data to manage revenue and profit.
More recently, there has been an attempt to apply these types of systems to sports events and concerts. See U.S. Pat. No. 7,110,960 issued Sep. 19, 2006 to Phillips et al., which is hereby incorporated for all purposes. See also Welki, Andrew M. and Thomas J. Zlatoper, “US Professional Football: The Demand For Game-Day Attendance in 1991,” Managerial and Decision Economics, Vol. 15, Issue 5, Special Issue: The Economics of Sports Enterprises (September-October, 1994) (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1994), pages 489-495. See also Drake, M. J., S. Duran, P. M. Griffin, and J. L. Swann, “Optimal timing of switches between product sales for sports and entertainment tickets,” Naval Research Logistics, Vol. 55, Issue 1, (New York: Wiley Periodicals, Inc., 2007), pp. 59-75. Determining pricing for sports events is sometimes more challenging than pricing airline seats and hotel rooms because there is more consistency in the airline or hotel industry. For example, typically an airline will fly the same plane the same day of the week at the same time to the same destination. Past history is a good indicator of future demand. In sports, however, demand is dependent on many factors including the opponent, the day of the week, if a player gets injured, or even the weather. Most past effort has focused on establishing the proper relationship between the many variables and demand. These systems can be very complex; thus, demand is still typically estimated by sales and marketing personnel based on their own past experience and intuition. This challenge is further complicated as the value of a ticket is also dependent on the location within the venue (as compared to an airline where all coach seats traditionally are considered of equal value).
Pricing for concerts and other “one-off” events can be more challenging than sporting events where the same team may play multiple games in the same venue. For these “one-off” events like concerts, boxing matches, ice shows, etc., pricing is often determined by targeting a specific total revenue assuming some portion of the seats sell. Promoters may use past history to estimate demand, but often this data is old, and customer preference, economic factors, and other issues impacting demand may have changed significantly for the current event relative to demand for a prior event.
One key to all of these challenges is being able to determine demand for the event, and then converting this demand into a fair price for tickets. Historically, tickets were only sold once, although there has almost always been “scalping,” or the ability to sell a ticket in the aftermarket. A recent proliferation of secondary marketing companies, particularly those that sell tickets on the web, has greatly increased the number of tickets that are resold. The availability of tickets in the aftermarket has important implications for the sale of original tickets. For example, tickets selling for a discount in the secondary market will negatively impact the sale of full price tickets in the primary market. The original, or primary, ticket market encompasses all instances in which event tickets are sold for the first time. The secondary ticket market encompasses all instances in which event tickets trade after the original point of purchase.
Original and secondary event ticket markets are known in the art. See U.S. Patent Application Pub. No. 2006/0095344 published May 4, 2006 for Nakfoor and U.S. Patent Application Pub. No. 2004/0093302 published May 13, 2004 for Baker et al., both hereby incorporated for all purposes.
There are a large number of secondary ticketing sites that enable the purchase of resold tickets through the Internet. Customers looking to purchase the ticket with the best overall value typically must browse from site to site and manually compare listings, both within one site and across multiple sites.
Once pricing is established, effective marketing of those tickets to the right customer poses another challenge. Determining which potential customers are most likely to purchase a specific type of product, whether in the primary or secondary market, can be difficult given the wide range of customers and varying and ever-changing interests of the public. Typically, customer analysis is done across all customers, but the exact nature of customer interest in an event may depend not only on the event but also on how much the customer is willing to pay for a ticket to that event. The customer profile may also depend on where the customer wants to sit in the venue.
Thus, there is a need for a system that is capable of more accurately forecasting demand for events and optimizing pricing for that event. There is also a need for this system to facilitate the price planning and inventory tracking process for events. There is also a need for this system to provide recommended price changes once an event goes on sale. There is a further need for this system to be able to correlate the demand to a specific customer demographic to aid in the marketing for the event. Finally, it is desirable for this information to be viewed in a format that is easy to interpret.
There is also a need to clearly display available inventory to potential purchasers of primary and secondary seats where the value of prospective seats is also clearly displayed.